Two major diplomatic changes occurred recently between the US and Iran and Cuba. Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, UK, US + Germany) completed an agreement regarding Iran’s nuclear program. It is historic that the US and Iran engaged in diplomatic relations and that the sanctions against Iran will end. The agreement opens Iran up for more foreign investment and trade. Will war be averted? We speak with Professor Muhammad Sahimi, a chemical engineer who frequently writes about Iranian politics and the nuclear program to hear an Iranian perspective on this agreement. And diplomatic relations were restored with Cuba after 54 years of economic and political isolation. The Cuban embassy was reopened in Washington, DC. We speak with Miguel Fraga, the First Secretary of the Cuban Embassy about the restoration of diplomacy, what Cuba is asking of the US and how the US is responding.

Dr. Muhammad Sahimi is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and holds the NIOC Chair in petroleum engineering at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. He is also active in journalism, writing frequently on Iranian politics. Sahimi received his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tehran in 1977. After briefly working for the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), he received a scholarship from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and traveled to the USA in 1978 (where he has since remained), completing his PhD at the University of Minnesota in 1984. He then moved to the University of Southern California, becoming Chairman of his department from 1999–2005. Since then he has held the NIOC Chair, which was formerly known as the “Shah Chair”, having been endowed by Shah Reza Pahlavi. He has also been a visiting professor in Australia and Europe, and a consultant to many industrial corporations.

Since 2003, Sahimi has written many articles on the subject of Iranian politics (particularly the Iranian nuclear programme) for websites such as Payvand, Antiwar.comand the Huffington Post. He has been a regular columnist for Tehran Bureau since 2008, and has written occasional pieces for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times,the Wall Street Journal the Harvard International Review and The Progressive. Sahimi is co-founder and editor of the website, Iran News and Middle East Reports.

Miguel Fraga is the First Secretary of the Embassy of Cuba in the US. For the past 4 years, he worked in the office of the United States Division of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Havana, Cuba. Prior to that, he served as Third Secretary in the Cuban Embassy in Canada. Fraga received a Bachelor of Science in Law at the University of Havana and a Master of Science in Foreign Relations from the Higher Institute of Foreign Relations “Raul Roa Garcia” in Havana.

This week there are two groups in Washington, DC protesting colonialist policies being imposed on them by the US government. Apache Stronghold traveled across the country from Oak Flat in Arizona because there was a provision in the most recent version of the National Defense Authorization Act to give land including the sacred site of Oak Flat to Resolution Copper Company – Rio Tinto – BHP for a billion dollar mining operation. The land was protected since 1955, but the mining companies have been trying to get a license to mine it since 2005. We speak with San Carlos Apache Tribal Councilman Wendsler Nosie and Naelyn Pike, a leader in the Apache Stronghold movement. The International People’s Tribunal held events over the past week in New York and Washington, DC to bring attention to the collaboration between the US and Philippines in the “war on terror” which is resulting in the disappearances, torture and murder of hundreds of people and the displacement of tens of thousands. We speak with Ka Paeng (Rafael Mariano) who is a former member of Congress and is current co-chair of the Peasant Movement of the Philippines, KMP.

Wendsler Nosie was born on July 10, 1959 on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, in Gila County, in San Carlos, Arizona and was raised in a traditional Apache way of life. He graduated from the Globe High School in May 1978 and attended Merritt College in Oakland, California, attended Phoenix College in Phoenix, Arizona, and graduated from the State of Arizona Banking Academy.

Following college, Councilman Nosie returned to the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation and began his employment with the San Carlos Apache Tribe as the Tribal Work Experience Program Director in 1982 and in 1988, he was elected to a four-year term to serve through 1992 as the Tribal Council Representative of the Peridot District for the San Carlos Apache Tribal Council, which governs the San Carlos Apache Tribe through its Amended Constitution and By-Laws, being federally recognized in 1934 through the U.S. Indian Reorganization Act.

Councilman Nosie then founded the Rural Opportunity of Arizona (ROA) in 1990, an individually owned business owned and operated by a tribal member, which provided opportunities for tribal members to become skilled in trade and trained for jobs throughout Arizona.

Councilman Nosie was re-elected as the Tribal Council Representative for the Peridot District in 2004 to serve a four-year term through 2008, was then inspired to run for the Tribal Chairman Seat and was elected by the San Carlos Apache People as their Tribal Chairman in 2006 to serve a four-year term ending in 2010, shortly after being elected to office, he resigned as the Director of ROA in 2006.

Wendsler Nosie, Sr., served as the Tribal Chairman for the San Carlos Apache Tribe, which is comprised of nearly 15,000 tribal members on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, in San Carlos, Arizona, ranging within the Gila, Graham and Pinal Counties, totaling 1.8 million acres, situated in the southeastern portion of the State of Arizona.

Councilman Nosie was recognized in 2006 and given an Honorable Mention by the Wake Forest University of Winston-Salem, North Carolina for his coordination of bringing students from Wake Forest University to the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation for a cultural integration program and was also recognized and honored in 2007 by the National Council of Churches from New York City for his accomplishments in Indian Country as a leader of spirituality among youth and organizing many events for over twenty-five years, which includes having worldwide participation of sacred runs in protection of the Native American Indian culture, tradition and heritage. The National Council of Churches comprises of over 30 million membership throughout the nation.

The people of Peridot District formed a movement to place Wendsler Nosie Sr. on the 2010 Peridot District Council election ballot as a write-in candidate and were successful. Wendsler Nosie Sr. is the current Peridot District Councilman, proudly serving his third term representing the largest San Carlos District.

“I contribute these accomplishments first to the creator who is known throughout the world by many names, to my mother and all my siblings, who have had a part of my up-bringing, and to my wonderful family who has stood by me through this roller coaster of life, to bring change to our Peoples’ lives.
Not to forget all my relatives, friends, and all those who have joined by path, and especially those who are no longer with us, who have played a very important part in sharing their history and visions for a better life for our people.

Our work is not done. We are now called on to work harder at understanding, believing, and committing to holding on to our spiritual beliefs, whether it is ancient Apache, or Christianity, for the world is changing quick and fast. Land, air, water and the environment we live in, is at risk, so for our unborn children to enjoy what God has created and instructed us on caring for, we must now dig deep to secure the future. “

Naelyn Pike is the granddaughter of Wendsler Nosie. She was raised as a traditional Apache in the San Carlos Tribe and she is a leader in the Apache Stronghold movement.

Ka Paeng (Rafael Mariano) is a Filipino politician and peasant leader. He is a former representative of Anakpawis party-list in the House of Representatives. He is known as Ka Paeng among activists.

Mariano is a native of Quezon, Nueva Ecija and is the eldest among the five children of peasant couple Narciso Mariano and Herminigilda Vitriolo. At an early age, he helped his parents and family tend their two-hectare farmland owned by a landlord in their area.

Mariano studied agriculture and agri-cooperatives in Wesleyan University and Liwag Colleges in Cabanatuan City. However, he failed in finishing his college degree to become a full-time farmer due to his father’s illness and increasing family debt.

At the age of 20, Mariano experienced activism first-hand by joining the local youth organization Bisig ng Kabataan (Youth Arm), which advocated the rights and welfare of local farmers. In 1981, the young Mariano was elected as councilor in his hometown.

His leadership in the peasant movement blossomed in the 1980s and in 1984, Mariano became a part in the formation of the Alyansa ng Magbubukid ng Gitnang Luzon (Central Luzon Peasant Alliance) where he served as second regional vice-chairperson in 1984.

In 1985, Mariano was elected as the founding general secretary of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Peasant Movement of the Philippines or KMP), a major peasant center in the Philippines. He was then elected as national vice chair of the organization in 1990 and as national chair in 1993.

During his stint with KMP, Mariano also served in the international left movement with the International League of People’s Struggle, International Alliance Against Agro-chemical Transnational Corporations, Pesticide Action Network-Asia and the Pacific Task Force on Food Sovereignty, and Philippines-Korea Committee for Peace and Reunification in the Korean Peninsula.

From 1998 to 2004, Mariano served as national chair of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (New Patriotic Alliance or BAYAN), the political center of the mainstream national democratic movement.

In 2004, Mariano, together with the late labor leader Crispin Beltran, was elected as representative of the Anakpawis (Toiling Masses) party-list in the House of Representatives. In 21 May 2008, he replaced Beltran in the 14th Congress after the latter’s death.

Anakpawis was re-elected in 2010 with Mariano as its number one nominee.

During his term in congress, Mariano has been part of the national democratic minority bloc in Congress together with representatives from Bayan Muna, Gabriela, Kabataan Party-list, and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers party-list. He has been an active oppositionist against the Arroyo administration and an advocate of pro-labor bills, such as the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill and the P125 Wage Increase Bill. To date, he has authored and co-authored 111 House measures.

In May 2006, Mariano, together with four congressmen from the national democratic bloc were detained inside the Batasang Pambansa on charges of rebellion filed by the Department of Justice. They were famously called the “Batasan 5.”

Mariano has openly rejected the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARPER), a law that seeks to amend and extend the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program by five years, saying that it still has pro-landlord provisions.

]]>http://clearingthefogradio.org/monday-july-20-us-colonization-at-home-and-abroad/feed/0This is What the Next Revolution Could Look Likehttp://clearingthefogradio.org/monday-july-13-this-is-what-the-next-revolution-could-look-like/
http://clearingthefogradio.org/monday-july-13-this-is-what-the-next-revolution-could-look-like/#commentsSun, 12 Jul 2015 20:38:18 +0000http://clearingthefogradio.org/?p=7416

We speak with Debbie Bookchin and Blair Taylor, editors of “The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy,” which is a compilation of essays by the late Murray Bookchin. Bookchin ran the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont which describes itself as “a pioneer in the exploration of ecological approaches to food production, alternative technologies, and urban design, and has played an essential, catalytic role in movements to challenge nuclear power, global injustices and unsustainable biotechnologies, while building participatory, community-based alternatives. The Institute strives to be an agent of social transformation, demonstrating the skills, ideas and relationships that can nurture vibrant, self-governed, healthy communities.” Bookchin was one of the most influential thought leaders in the later twentieth century about anarchism who developed the concepts of “social ecology” and “libertarian municipalism.”

Blair Taylor has been involved with the Institute for Social Ecology since 2000. Co-editor of the recent bookThe Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy, featuring essays by Murray Bookchin, Blair is presently completing a doctorate in politics at the New School for Social Research examining the historical evolution of the US left from the New Left to Occupy Wall Street. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, he currently works in Germany as a fellow at the Einstein Crisis Research Group at The Free University of Berlin. Active in the global justice movement, today he works with a variety of political and educational projects.

Debbie Bookchin is the daughter of Murray Bookchin. She is an author and journalist who wrote “The Virus and the Vaccine: Contaminated Vaccines, Deadly Cancers and Government Neglect” with Jim Schumacher.

]]>http://clearingthefogradio.org/monday-july-13-this-is-what-the-next-revolution-could-look-like/feed/0Racism: From South Carolina to the Dominican Republic and Beyondhttp://clearingthefogradio.org/racism-from-south-carolina-to-the-dominican-republic-and-beyond/
http://clearingthefogradio.org/racism-from-south-carolina-to-the-dominican-republic-and-beyond/#commentsMon, 29 Jun 2015 12:41:49 +0000http://clearingthefogradio.org/?p=7406

The recent massacre of nine people in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina by a white supremacist highlights the racist culture that is particularly prevalent in the South and has amplified the call for removal of symbols such as the Confederate flag. The attack demonstrates that institutionalized racism is not isolated to the police and judicial system, it is pervasive in the educational system, government and in our neighborhoods. And it is not limited to the United States but extends around the world, particularly where the US Empire and other colonists have interfered. Kymone Freeman, an activist and artist, and Reverend Graylan Hagler of the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, DC join us to discuss the state of racism in the US and around the world today.

Kymone Freeman (guerrilla artist) is the director of the National Black LUV Festival recognized as a Washington, D.C. Mayor’s Art Award Finalist for Excellence in Service to the Arts in 2006 and received a Mayoral Proclamation in 2007. est. 1997 NBLF has since become the largest annual AIDS mobilization in WDC. Freeman has appeared along side Mark Twain and Harriet Tubman in newspapers and subway cars throughout WDC metro area as a Clinical AIDS Vaccine Trial Participant and NIH “Everyday Heroes” Ad Campaign Model to bring attention to this pandemic. Freeman is a founding board member for Words Beats & Life, a Hip Hop Non-Profit and co-founder of Bum Rush the Boards the largest annual youth chess competition in WDC. He is the subject of one chapter of the book Beat of A Different Drum: The Untold Stories of African Americans Forging Their Own Paths in Work and Life (Hyperion). He has authored a collection of poetry entitled Blood.Sweat.Tears.

His dedication to art and activism lead him to accept the position of NYC spokesperson and official poet of the anti-war independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader during his campaign in ’04. A scholarship received from American Friends Service Committee to spend the summer in Nairobi, Kenya for an international leadership conference resulted in him returning to the states as a playwright. He received the 22nd Annual Larry Neal Award for Drama for the successful play Prison Poetry that has appeared at the Historic Lincoln Theatre and Source Theatre during the Hip Hop Theatre Festival, THEARC Theatre, Oak Hill Juvenile Detention Facility and several college campuses where his work has been included in the Black History curriculum of Maryland’s Easternshore. He has conducted production workshops at the National Black Theatre Festival and Institute of Policy Studies.

His second stageplay was commissioned by Jive Recording Artist Raheem DeVaughn entitled the Love Experience. He has studied under the legendary independent filmmakers Haile Gerima, Raoul Peck and Sam Greenlee. Freeman’s second screenplay Nineveh: a conflict over water a futuristic drama that paints a post-oil depleted world has been produced as a short film and is pursuing a feature length release.

He is currently Program Director of We ACT Radio 1480 AM DC’s new progressive radio station.

In 1980, he founded a congregation in Roxbury, Massachusetts and in 1991 ran for mayor of that city and lost. During his 12 years as a pastor in Boston Reverend Hagler’s work was one of empowerment and opposition to the forms of racism that gripped the city in the 1980s. He campaigned to protect citizens from unconstitutional and illegal police practices and to safeguard democratic participation in the selection and election of black political leadership. He also led the Free South Africa Movement to force divestiture of dollars from the support of the Apartheid system.

In 1992, Reverend Hagler moved to Washington, D.C., where today he is the Senior Minister of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ and continues to preach and organize. He has fought the proliferation of liquor stores in the black community and has insisted on community participation in development issues. In 1993 he opposed theExxon Corporation’s plans to build a ‘super gas station’ in the neighborhood where his church is located. In 2003, Reverend Hagler broke ground on that same Exxon site after acquiring the property. Instead of a ‘super station,’ 69 units of subsidized apartments for senior citizens opened in February 2005. Reverend Hagler worked to preserve the only publicly funded hospital in the District of Columbia, organized a successful effort to oppose the death penalty from being instituted by the United States Congress on the district, and continues the fight against public school vouchers, which he sees as a plan to divert funds from public education to private schools.

Reverend Hagler served on the Steering and Administrative Committee of United for Peace and Justice, a national coalition working to oppose aspects of U.S. foreign policy that the group believes contribute to war and aggression. Reverend Hagler is the former Development Director of the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) which helps people become homeowners. Reverend Hagler has also served as chaplain to UNITE HERE Local 25, the labor union representing hotel workers in the Washington Metropolitan Area.

He is the Executive Director of Faith Strategies, an organization of clergy he founded in 2012. Faith Strategies organizes efforts to better the lot of working people, protects human and civil rights and develop strategies for movements to embrace the faith community.

Rev. Hagler has advocated to change the name of the Washington Redskins, arguing that the current name is racist. He believes in the dignity and worth of all people, the worth of workers, empower movements and people so that liberation is realized.

In the wake of Freddie Gray’s murder by police, national attention has been focused on Baltimore. Residents of Baltimore have come together in unprecedented ways to protest police brutality and organize for longer term change. Police brutality and unjustified arrests have been problems in Baltimore for a long time stemming back to Mayor Martin O’Malley’s program of mass arrests without probable cause. One sixth of the population of Baltimore was arrested in one year, tens of thousands of which were youth who were held overnight and released in the morning without charges. But the injustice in Baltimore runs deeper. Wealth inequality has been rising in Baltimore, MD so that some neighborhoods look like war zones with rows of abandoned houses and dilapidated structures while others are dotted with large mansions and their sophisticated gardens. There is a twenty year difference in life expectancy between neighborhoods within the city. Delegate Jill Carter, a practicing attorney in Baltimore, and Dayvon Love of Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle will speak about the history of police violence and poverty in Baltimore and what is being done to bring justice to the people.

Prior to law school, Carter was a journalist for Afro American Newspapers. She was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 1993. She has worked as a staff attorney for The Legal Aid Bureau, the Office of the Public Defender, and the Office of the City Solicitor. She is a member of Monumental City Bar Association, the Maryland Trial Lawyers’ Association and a founding member of the Black Lawyers Group and founder and president of the Walter P. Carter Foundation. She was the Executive Director of the Maryland Minority Business Association in 2002, chair of the Baltimore Branch NAACP Legal Redress Committee, and was listed in Maryland’s Top 100 Women in the Daily Record in 2006. In 2009,she was the honored as an “Exceptional Woman in Business and Government”, at the first annual “Pretty in Pinstripes” Women’s History Month celebration.

Carter was elected to the Maryland legislature after defeating four incumbents in the Democratic primary that September. She was the third African-American female attorney elected to the Maryland Legislature. The first was Lena K. Lee who served from 1967–1982; the second, Lisa Gladden, served from 1998–2002; and, finally, Jill Carter (2003–present).

During her first term from 2003–2006, she was the only African-American female attorney serving in the Maryland House of Delegates. She is currently a member of the House Judiciary Committee and chair of the Estates and Trusts Subcommittee, the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland, and the Women Legislators of Maryland. Carter voted against legalizing slot machines in Maryland in 2005. Prior to her re-election in 2006, she became a vocal critic of then mayor (now Governor Martin O’Malley‘s “failed policing policies”. She posited that the so-labeled, zero tolerance, arrest strategy failed to cause significant reduction in a soaring crime rate in Baltimore City, but, rather, pressured police officers to make tens of thousands of arrests that did not produce criminal charges.She has oft been referred to as a lone voice in the wilderness for her challenges to established politicians on matters of adequate housing for the poor,lead poisoning of children, to adequately fund public education, both in the legislature,and in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City., and, in 2007, calling for a special session of the legislature to deal with the BGE utility rate increase.

In 2008, Carter was the only member of Baltimore City’s state delegation to receive a grade of “Outstanding” from the local NAACP.

Dayvon Love is the Research Director of Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle. Dayvon was a policy debater for the Towson University debate team. In 2008, he Deven Cooper won the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) National Championship – the first time in history that an all black team won the tournament. He has been an active participant in the Baltimore Algebra Project and Baltimore CAN. He has given numerous speeches and led workshops around Baltimore to give insight into the plight of the masses of Baltimore citizens.

]]>http://clearingthefogradio.org/baltimores-struggle-for-urban-justice/feed/0Time for US to Get Out of Okinawahttp://clearingthefogradio.org/monday-june-8-time-for-us-to-get-out-of-okinawa/
http://clearingthefogradio.org/monday-june-8-time-for-us-to-get-out-of-okinawa/#commentsSat, 06 Jun 2015 02:23:48 +0000http://clearingthefogradio.org/?p=7384

Recently we met with a delegation of mayors from Okinawa who came to the United States because the US is building a very large military base in Henoko that will destroy ecologically sensitive areas and that is not wanted by the people of Okinawa. Through opinion polls, the election of politicians who are opposed to the base and persistent nonviolent direct action, Okinawans are making it clear that they are not supportive of a continued US military presence there. With less than 1% of Japan’s land mass, Okinawa is home to 74% of the US military in Japan. We air a recorded interview with Mayor Susumu Inamine of Nago City in Okinawa where the Henoko Base is being built. Then we speak with Professor Steve Rabson who studies and writes about the situation in Okinawa.

Susumu Inamine is the mayor of Nago City in the Okinawa Prefecture. He has been a staunch opponent of the US’ plans to expand its military presence in Okinawa by building a new and large base in Henoko.

“Victory for Grassroots as Fast Track Goes Down in Crucial Senate Vote,” screams the headline at Common Dreams this morning. Only one Democrat, Senator Carper of Delaware, voted with the Republicans to give President Obama “fast track” authority. Carper will not be funded by the Democratic Party in his next election for voting against the environment and workers, if the Democratic Party is to stand for anything.

COOLER HEADS PREVAILING?

“US Secretary of State John Kerry has warned Petro Poroshenko against inciting any new hostilities after the Ukrainian president vowed to win back Donetsk Airport. Kerry was in Sochi for high level talks with President Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov,” begins a piece at Russia Today. This is the first time since the US-supported violent coup of the elected Ukrainian government, that the State Department has done anything to calm the situation.

It may be that cooler heads are prevailing now, as it becomes more apparent that the confrontation is headed toward what might become World War III with the probability of global, thermonuclear war in which there would be no winner.

We haven’t addressed the Seymour Hersh story about the Osama bin Laden murder event, because we don’t know what really happened. Even the Navy SEALS participating in the execution tell conflicting stories.

But we know Hersh to be a credible journalist, so we accept most of what he wrote. Every version we’ve heard has holes in it somewhere, and it would appear mainstream media have bought a pack of lies, as is so often true in National Security State issues. That’s what they get for sticking their microphone in front of Pentagon officials and accepting the result as “journalism.”

Paul Craig Roberts dismisses the Hersh piece as disinformation, and here again, good points are made, like the fact that so many sources reported bin Laden as having died just months after the 9/11 attacks, and long before the video was made of him accepting responsibility for the dirty deed.

We’ve never understood at LUV News why it was that bin Laden denied having anything to do with the 9/11 attacks at least twice within a few months following the event. The USA had massive rewards out for his head, and his followers would have adored him for having blown up the Pentagon and World Trade towers, so he had nothing to lose by admitting he did it.

A later attempt to put out a video of bin Laden claiming responsibility was discredited by Swiss scientists as a fake. Another video put out by al Jazeera was never verified to us by al Jazeera as true– we contacted them several times but never got a response as to how it was authenticated and finally gave up.

If bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11, millions of people have died in a hopeless war begun on a massive lie –Jack Balkwill

US Establishment Press Dismiss, Shrug Off Seymour Hersh’s Story on Killing of bin Laden

by Kevin Gosztola

Most distressing about investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s story on the lies President Barack Obama’s administration reportedly told about the killing of Osama bin Laden is the general reaction of the United States establishment press.

Hersh is an award-winning journalist best known for exposing the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War. It earned him a Pulitzer Prize. He also did stellar reporting on the abuse and torture of detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. Yet, most establishment press seem to be shrugging at Hersh’s latest 10,000-word feature story published by the London Review of Books or they are snidely dismissing it altogether.

Is it because most in the US press wholly accept the narrative put forward by the Obama administration around the raid that killed bin Laden? Is it because they have moved on and no longer find it worthy to investigate what really happened? Is it because they do not want to believe what Hersh is alleging because it amounts to a major international espionage conspiracy if it all happens to be true?

Christopher Frizzelle of The Stranger already went to the trouble to list off each allegation against the Obama administration that is made in Hersh’s story. So, courtesy of Frizzelle:

Pakistani officials knew about the raid and even helped the US pull it off.

There never was a firefight, neither in the yard outside the house nor once the Seals got inside.

The story of the courier whom the reportedly CIA traced, leading them to bin Laden, was a fabrication.

The story of the courier dying in the firefight was a cover-up “because he didn’t exist and we couldn’t produce him,” a retired senior intelligence official told Hersh.

The way the CIA actually found out where bin Laden was is that a “Pakistani walk-in” who wanted the $25 million reward came in and told the CIA about it.

Osama bin Laden was not armed, contrary to reports that he had a machine gun and was killed in a firefight, and he was not killed with just one or two bullets but “obliterated.”

“Seals cannot live with the fact that they killed bin Laden totally unopposed, and so there has to be an account of their courage in the face of danger. The guys are going to sit around the bar and say it was an easy day? That’s not going to happen,” that same retired senior intelligence official said.

“Despite all the talk” about what the Seals collected on site, the retired official said there were “no garbage bags full of computers and storage devices. The guys just stuffed some books and papers they found in his room in their backpacks.”

The story about bin Laden’s sea burial may be a fabrication.

The retired official told Hersh that bin Laden’s “remains, including his head… were thrown into a body bag and, during the helicopter flight back to Jalalabad, some body parts were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains—or so the Seals claimed.”

Obama was going to wait a week until after bin Laden’s death to announce it, and he was going to tell the American people that bin Laden had been killed by a drone, but after the Seals had to blow up their malfunctioning helicopter onsite, attracting attention locally, everything changed.

The story about the vaccination program carried out locally in an attempt to get bin Laden’s DNA—a story that “led to the cancellation of other international vaccination programmes that were now seen as cover for American spying”—wasn’t true.

Retired official again: “It’s a great hoax.”

What are Hersh’s sources for these claims against the Obama administration?

Hersh relies on a “major US source” who is not named in the story. The person is described as a “retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad.” He also sources his claims to two additional unnamed US sources, “who had access to corroborating information” and have been “longtime consults to the Special Operations Command.”

He writes that he received information from “inside Pakistan” that indicates “senior ISI and military leadership” were upset with Obama’s decision to immediately go public with the news that bin Laden was killed. He also quotes Asad Durrani, who was the head of Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI, in the 1990s.

One of the key criticisms of Hersh’s story is that it relies on anonymous sources. However, should this criticism be allowed to invalidate the claims put forward by Hersh?

I have zealously criticized the frequent use of anonymous sources by journalists. It happens quite often at the New York Times and The Washington Post. However, as Times public editor Margaret Sullivan has articulated:

For many journalists, they can be a necessity. And that necessity is increasing — especially for stories involving national security — now that the Obama administration’s crackdown on press leaks has made news sources warier of speaking on the record. (Leonard Downie Jr. , a former executive editor of The Washington Post, has written revealingly about this for the Committee to Protect Journalists.)

“It’s almost impossible to get people who know anything to talk,” Bill Hamilton, who edits national security coverage for The Times, told me. Getting them to talk on the record is even harder. “So we’re caught in this dilemma.”

There is a tradition in journalism of using anonymous—or confidential sources—to expose scandal. Watergate and warrantless wiretapping were both revealed in this manner.

Which ultimately leads one to conclude that the problem members of the establishment press and others reflexively have with Hersh is not that he uses anonymous sources but that he uses these anonymous sources to challenge a narrative they have already decided to accept as truth. If that narrative is wrong, they have to seriously rethink what they have been doing as journalists, especially if they report on war or national security matters.

That a bunch of unnamed Pakistani and US special operations sources dismiss Hersh’s story as pure bunk does not really disprove anything in his story. What if these sources are somehow invested in the narrative of events that players involved in the raid. What if they are somehow wedded to the statements of officials deployed to sell Americans a certain story about the operation?

It should be noted that many of these same journalists reacting to Hersh’s story also dismissed his latest investigative journalism on Turkey’s potential role in the Syria chemical attack that nearly sparked US attacks and the Obama administration’s “cherry-picking” of intelligence to justify launching a war after the chemical attack.

Members of the US establishment press are not generally opposed to the use of anonymous sources in national security reporting. They just are collectively only comfortable with telling certain stories with anonymous sources, and, in this case, it is clear one of those stories will never be about how the Obama administration and CIA were in on an international espionage conspiracy to kill bin Laden.

*

Unquestionably, if Hersh’s story is the truth, which is entirely possible, then Zero Dark Thirty is an even greater masterpiece of propaganda. CIA officers on contract developed a cover story that would help the CIA publicly defend its torture program. Officials would say that information used to catch bin Laden came from “enhanced interrogation.” (Press in Washington, DC, were mostly positive about the film initially.)

If it is truth, it also means that journalists fell victim to a grand disinformation campaign perpetrated by the Obama administration. It may not be as embarrassing and troubling as what happened around the march to war in Iraq, but it still demonstrates how easily officials can manipulate the press to tell the story they want told about the “War on Terrorism.” And, generally, it is a key example of how the Obama administration packaged an assassination operation and slickly exploited it to ensure Obama’s re-election campaign went smoothly.

Rather than mocking Hersh’s story, a better response for skeptics would be to actually prove Hersh wrong through journalism. The only problem is no journalist is likely to spend time digging to prove Hersh wrong if they already think they know what exactly occurred—and many US journalists seem to think they know what happened so there is no need to pursue this story any further.

What this means is Americans are likely to be left with a fascinating counter-history to the Obama administration’s official story of events that becomes a Rorschach test. It is true if you doubt most of what the government tells you about the “war on terrorism,” and it is false if you believe the government is mostly right to be waging the “war on terrorism.” But no one will ever quite know

Judging the reaction of establishment journalists, it also is a Rorschach test for them too. His sourcing is flawed because they have decided these are anonymous sources they would never rely on for a story as damning as this one. But, if Hersh had uncovered an angle to the story that added details but did not challenge the Obama administration and the CIA, they might think his anonymous sources were worth believing.

Tell your friends about LUV News because some people just don’t get it

]]>http://clearingthefogradio.org/win-for-the-people-cooler-heads-prevailing-us-press-dismiss-seymour-hersh/feed/0Obama Pressured to Answer for Torture, We must All be Conservatives, Inside the Billion Dollar Brainhttp://clearingthefogradio.org/obama-pressured-to-answer-for-torture-we-must-all-be-conservatives-inside-the-billion-dollar-brain/
http://clearingthefogradio.org/obama-pressured-to-answer-for-torture-we-must-all-be-conservatives-inside-the-billion-dollar-brain/#commentsTue, 12 May 2015 19:51:34 +0000http://clearingthefogradio.org/?p=7371

“The Obama administration is facing renewed pressure to answer for its track record on torture after the relative calm that followed the release of the Senate torture report’s damning executive summary in December,” begins a piece by Ali Watkins this morning. Because of a corrupt mainstream press, most citizens aren’t even aware that some of the most horrendous human rights violations are committed by agents of our government.

CORPORATE MEDIA: WE MUST ALL BE CONSERVATIVES

In FAIR‘s latest report, they show that when conservatives win elections anywhere on the planet, the mainstream media pushes stories saying that American liberals must move rightward to win elections.

When leftists such as Nicolás Maduro win elections, they are demonized as “dictators” in corporate media, the opposite of reality– when this happens conservatives are not told they have to move to the left to win.

It is no wonder that most Americans have almost no idea what’s happening domestically or abroad. Control of information works, which is why we do LUV News. Thank you members for getting it out to family, friends, neighbors, work colleagues and internet groups. We know it’s hard, people are trained in the Land of the Free to be afraid of facts that don’t come from their TV set, but if you only turn the light on for one person, we are a bigger force for championing democracy.

I have long thought that all billionaires are psychopaths. To arrive at this, I accept the conventional wisdom that they are intelligent, something the rich seem eager to promote. My logic is, if indeed they are intelligent, they must be aware that they are sucking so much wealth out of the economy that they leave a wake of poverty, hunger and homelessness.

Their portfolios include investments in war, pollution and profiting from suffering by default, when that much money gets invested.

I then conclude that if they are indeed intelligent and aware, they must be psychopaths.

There really isn’t any need for one person to control that kind of wealth. How many yachts can one person sail? How many mansions can one occupy? How many luxury jets can one fly? At some point it becomes a form of insanity, accumulating wealth for the purpose of accumulating more wealth. Bill Gates creates The Gates Foundation, to protect his wealth from taxes, investing the money in things to help rich people like himself make more money. He brings in Indian programmers to work for less than his own employees– to screw the very people who helped create his fortune.

As Thomas Jefferson so aptly put it, the merchant has no loyalty to so much as the spot on which he stands. The big capitalists are no different from the tyrants they replaced, the czars and princes of feudalism, except that they work from behind the scenes, allowing regents to rule on their behalf.

By the way, this week’s Clearing the FOG goes into the future of global governance. Unless we change direction, we are headed toward a world in which the billionaires dominate everything at the expense of the public interest.

I despise billionaires, all of them. There isn’t one of them on the planet whose absence wouldn’t bring about a better world. There isn’t one who gives a damn about anything beyond their own narcissism –Jack Balkwill

Many of us wonder what possible reason could exist for the failure to invest in American infrastructure, to create millions of jobs as a result, and to help everyone in the long run. Analysis reveals personality traits and beliefs and misconceptions that might account for such behavior. Here’s a look inside the billion-dollar brain:

1. It’s All About Me

Several studies by Paul Piff and his colleagues have revealed that upper-class individuals tend to be narcissistic, with a clear sense of entitlement. Worse yet, they believe theirtalents and attributes – genius, even – have earned them a rightful position of status over everyone else.

Scarier yet, according to one study, the American sense of entitlement has been growingover the past 30 years, despite the fact that most of us have lost ground to the super-rich. And most disturbing is that ‘upper-class’ individuals tend to behave more unethically than average citizens.

This “all about me” attitude means that the wealthy don’t have to depend on others, and that they have less need to understand the feelings of others. This directly impacts our daily lives. The greater the concentration of wealth, the less a society invests in infrastructure. Our investment in infrastructure as a percent of GDP dropped by 60 percent from 1968 to 2011.

As the super-rich take their helicopters to and from work, they’re having multi-million-dollarbunkers built under their houses to sustain them when the middle-class revolution comes.

2. It’s All About Lazy People Who Refuse to Work

Congressmen and CEOs don’t normally see the people affected by their actions. This leads to a resentment of the poor, and imagined abuses in the minds of people like Paul Ryan and Scott Walker, both of whom likened the safety net to a “hammock,” and Texas Republican Louie Gohmert, who decried the purchase of crab legs by people on a $5-a-day food stamp budget.

John Boehner daydreamed: “This idea that has been born…that, you know, ‘I really don’t have to work…I think I’d rather just sit around.'”

Almost all healthy adult Americans, of course, want to work. But in 2011 Senate Republicans killed a proposed $447 billion jobs bill that would have added about two million jobs to the economy. Members of Congress filibustered Nancy Pelosi’s “Prevention of Outsourcing Act,” even as a million jobs were being outsourced, and they temporarily blocked the “Small Business Jobs Act.” In April, 2013 only one member of Congressbothered to show up for a hearing on unemployment. When asked what he would do to bring jobs to Kentucky, Mitch McConnell responded, “That is not my job. It is the primary responsibility of the state Commerce Cabinet.”

The lazy people who refuse to work are, in reality, the tax avoiders who are getting $2.2 trillion without having to work for it.

But Tax Avoidance costs us $2,200 Billion (tax expenditures, tax underpayments, tax havens, and corporate nonpayment). That’s $2.2 trillion, six times more than the safety net, most of it benefiting the wealthiest Americans.

3. It’s All About Waiting for the Free Market to Work Its Magic

Conservative analyst Michael Barone said, “Markets work. But sometimes they take time.” Thirty-five years, so far. Beneficiaries of low taxes and deregulation desperately want to believe that “trickle-down” works, or at least to convince middle America that it works. They want to believe, against all logic, that lower taxes mean more tax revenue.

All this in the face of mountains of data disproving their supply-side ideas. As far back as1984 the Treasury Department concluded that most tax cuts lose revenue. More recent studies by Saez et al. and by the Economic Policy Institute found no connection between tax rates and economic growth, and Piketty, Saez, and Stantcheva determined that the optimal tax rate could be over 80 percent.

There is also hard evidence that cutting taxes on the rich fails to stimulate job creation, and that raising taxes on the rich has the opposite, beneficial effect. The facts come from Kansas and Minnesota. Despite early optimism by trickle-down adherents, tax cuts in Kansas have been disastrous, leading to revenue losses, cutbacks in education and health care, and sluggish job growth. In Minnesota, on the other hand, tax increases on the rich have led to higher wages, low unemployment, and rapid business growth.

The rich don’t care about creating jobs. They don’t care about Robert Reich’s insight about more and more jobs being lost to smart technologies, leading to a society in which “those who create or invest in blockbuster ideas will earn unprecedented sums and returns,” leaving much less for the rest of us.

The solution, says Chris Hedges, is to take on corporate power by instituting “a nationwide public works program, especially for those under the age of 25, to create conditions for full employment.” Every American, of course, deserves the opportunity to earn a living wage. It will take a revolution against narcissism to make it happen.

“A top commander warned that Iran is ready for an all-out war with US, alleging that aggression against Tehran ‘will mobilize the Muslim world’ against it. The remarks follow Secretary of State John Kerry’s claims that military force was still an option,” begins a piece atRussia Today this morning.

Americans are prepared for wars like these in two distinct ways. First, by a staccato of stories warning of menacing Muslims, such as the following headlines out of yesterday’s TV “news” programs (where most Americans get their news).

Second, from government control by “defense” contractors, exemplified by this piece from The Intercept, in which it is explained how the leading candidates for office are manipulated by the “defense” industry into taking hawkish positions in support of the National Security State (financed by our tax dollars, to boot). If candidates don’t accept this definition of “defense,” they don’t get the campaign funding or the TV coverage.

Lest anyone should mistakenly believe that this has anything to do with democracy, polling continually shows that the American people want the wars stopped and the troops brought home. The public do not get a say in this.

Inside the ‘Clinton Cash’ war room

Hillary Clinton’s primary defense against the book, Clinton Cash, has been to denounce the author for being right wing and to say that it cannot be proven that there was a quid pro quo in the donations to the Clinton foundation and her following actions, as Secretary of State, in support of the donors.

What bothers some about this particular scandal is that they believe it is okay for wealthy investors or corporations to buy favors from government as long as they are American (i.e. campaign funding), but Hillary has apparently found a way to sell favors to foreigners.

As super capitalism expands into every corner of life, with absolutely no concern about anything but profit, we are increasingly being poisoned in the name of “economic efficiency.” It is more efficient for agribusiness to douse entire fields in herbicides to keep down the weeds, before planting crops that people will eat. Weeding is labor-intensive and is theoretically eliminated by this method.

I say “theoretically,” because, like most organisms, weeds become tolerant of the herbicides and mutate into a plant that may grow in the poison, like the genetically modified agribusiness food we are now unknowingly eating (because a corrupt government protects agribusiness from disclosing this).

LUV has a Facebook group called The Healing Group that discusses natural healing– things individuals can do to avoid Big Pharma’s poisons (they knowingly kill thousands of people each year as the cost of doing business). In that group we warn of poisons in food and dangerous pills. You don’t get this information from national TV nightly news because their primary sponsors are Big Pharma firms– there to intimidate with their millions of dollars in ad revenue. We also have an older Yahoo healing group for those who don’t mind getting an email every time someone posts.

Thanks to all of our members who get LUV News out. When more people are aware, democracy will have a chance to break out. We’ve found that when people see that, every day, we can put out blockbuster news stories which impact their lives and are censored, or missing the public interest viewpoint, in their mainstream press, they eventually catch on and become part of the solution –Jack Balkwill

Monsanto is Threatening the Safety of Children With Its Toxic Weed Killers

by Mary Ellen Kustin, Soren Rundquist / Environmental Working Group

Genetically engineered crops, or GMOs, have led to an explosion in growers’ use of herbicides, with the result that children at hundreds of elementary schools across the country go to class close by fields that are regularly doused with escalating amounts of toxic weed killers.

GMO corn and soybeans have been genetically engineered to withstand being blasted with glyphosate – an herbicide that the World Health Organization recently classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The proximity of many schools to fields blanketed in the chemical puts kids at risk of exposure. But it gets worse.

Overreliance on glyphosate has spawned the emergence of “superweeds” that resist the herbicide, so now producers of GMO crops are turning to even more harmful chemicals. First up is 2,4-D, a World War II-era defoliant that has been linked to non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Parkinson’s disease and reproductive problems. Young children are especially vulnerable to it.

A new EWG interactive map shows the amounts of glyphosate sprayed in each U.S. county and tallies the 3,247 elementary schools that are located within 1,000 feet of a corn or soybean field and the 487 schools that are within 200 feet. Click on any county on the map to see how much GMO corn and soy acreage has increased there as well as the number of nearby elementary schools.

The 15 states outlined on the map across the center of the country are the ones where the Environmental Protection Agency has approved the use of Dow AgroSciences’ Enlist Duo – a combination of glyphosate and 2,4-D – on GMO corn and soybeans engineered to tolerate both weed killers.

The chart shows the 10 states with the most elementary schools within 1,000 feet of a corn or soybean field. These states account for 53 percent of the total acreage planted with genetically engineered GMO corn and soy. EPA has approved the use of Enlist Duo in seven of them.

The inescapable connection between GMO crops and increased use of toxic herbicides is one reason why many people want to know whether the products they buy contain GMOs. Polls show that more than 90 percent of consumers favor labeling GMOs, but without a mandatory labeling law, they have no way to know for sure.

Methodology:

EWG approximated school locations using the ESRI (www.esri.com) landmark shape file for schools, derived from the U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System – Schools layer. These are considered the best available data for school locations. The data were filtered to the best of EWG’s knowledge to include only locations whose attributed name reflects an operating elementary school, but they may inadvertently include some free-standing school administrative offices or buildings that formerly housed schools but are now in other use.

Zones within 200 feet and 1,000 feet of each school were delineated using the school’s point location in the ESRI data, not the physical footprint of the school grounds. As a result, EWG’s analysis may over- or under-estimate the exact distance of school grounds to the boundaries of nearby corn or soybean fields. School locations were evaluated for proximity to the boundaries of corn and soybean fields as delineated in the USDA 2013 cropland data layer (30-meter resolution).

EWG acknowledges that spatial analyses of this kind may include some level of error (such as incorrect or outdated school or crop field locations or boundaries) even with standard, best available data sources. EWG welcomes information to revise and correct any locational errors in the underlying data.

Data on the acreage of genetically modified corn and soybeans were assembled by extrapolating from county-planted acreage using state percentages of biotech varieties by crop, as reported by the USDA. For corn, state level “herbicide resistant” + “stacked gene” varieties were used to extrapolate county-level planted acreage. If a state was not specifically listed in the USDA NASS Acreage Report, the category “Other” was used in the extrapolation. For soybeans, the state-level “all biotech varieties” was used to extrapolate planted acres at the county level. If a state was not specifically listed in the USDA NASS Acreage Report, the category “Other” was used in the county extrapolation.

From Common Dreams we learn: “Thursday’s United Kingdom elections brought a surprise lurch to the right, with the Conservative Party seizing the majority of Parliamentary seats and Prime Minister David Cameron sweeping back to power with more muscle behind him this time.”

“Cameron immediately signaled that he plans to oppose independence for Scotland and Wales. “I want my party, and I hope a government that I would like to lead, to reclaim a mantle that we should never have lost—the mantle of one nation, one United Kingdom,” he said on Friday.”

“However, the Scottish Nationalist Party—anti-nuclear, anti-austerity, and pro-independence—made considerable gains, jumping from just six seats to 56.”

NSA PHONE SURVEILLANCE IS ILLEGAL

“The US court of appeals has ruled that the bulk collection of telephone metadata is unlawful, in a landmark decision that clears the way for a full legal challenge against the National Security Agency.” begins a piece at The Guardian.

In other National Security State news, “Germany is scaling back its intelligence-sharing operations with the U.S., shortly after it was revealed that the German government had spied on European allies on behalf of the National Security Agency from 2002 to 2013.”

In today’s opinion piece, Valerie Bell, whose son Sean was gunned down by the police in 2006, explains why she is spending Mother’s Day in Washington D.C. marching against violence.—Jodda Mitchell

WHY I AM MARCHING ON MOTHER’S DAY FOR MY SON

By Valerie Bell

It’s hard for me to celebrate on Mother’s Day. I feel the absence of my 23-year-old son, Sean Elijah Bell, who was killed on November 25, 2006. He was out celebrating at his own bachelor party with his friends in New York City. It was only a matter of a hours before his wedding, and I was so thrilled.

Sean and his friends were enjoying their night at a club where there happened to be three undercover police officers present, conducting an investigation of the club. A confrontation between patrons erupted outside. One of the undercover officer’s, Isnora, said he overheard that Sean’s friend was going to get his gun, and after calling in for backup, Isnora followed my son and his friends to their car.

Isnora’s lieutenant had given him the order to proceed with further action, but Isnora never identified himself as an officer nor did he show a badge when he pulled out his own gun and approached my son and his friends in the car. My son, not seeing the officer’s badge, but only a man confronting him with a gun, kept driving. Suddenly Isnora began to open fire, followed by the two additional undercover officers who had arrived as backup. The officers said later they thought they heard gunfire coming from Sean’s car, but it was the other officer’s bullets ricocheting. One officer fired 31 shots — and continuously reloaded.

A total of 50 shots were fired at Sean’s car; 4 of them entered his body, killing him.

That was eight years ago — but not much has changed since then. Seemingly every week another unarmed black man is in the news, having been killed by a police officer or vigilante who made another fatally false assumption. Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Rekia Boyd, Freddie Gray– the list goes on. These were all sons and daughters to someone.

This year we are taking back the original intention of Mother’s Day: a day founded for mothers to stand up together to make collective demands. After the Civil War and the economic turmoil that followed, American abolitionist Julia Ward Howe, horrified by the wars and devastation of her time, penned a proclamation to mothers everywhere:

“Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause,” she wrote. “Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience… From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, disarm!”

Howe called on women to “promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”

It’s now a century after the founding of Mother’s Day, and our sons are still being taken from us. Society has not disarmed, but militarized to the teeth. Mothers’ sons everywhere are still killing and being killed. We have had enough.

Police militarization has ripped apart the fabric of our communities. Armed with military grade vehicles and weapons, warrior cops cultivate an atmosphere of tension and fear, exacerbating conflicts instead of resolving them. We all know we’re going to die one day, but it certainly should not be at the hands of a public servant who is supposed to serve and protect us.

Last December, I joined a delegation of grieving mothers organized by CODEPINK, and we brought our stories to Congress, the White House, and the Department of Justice. Did our cries fall upon deaf ears? When will things change? As a mother, I feel that it is my responsibility to help others — to support other mothers whose children have also fallen victim to police violence, to be a voice for my son, Sean Bell.

This Mother’s Day, let’s come together to demand an end to this cycle of violence, this society of institutionalized racism and police militarization. We are healers, teachers, caretakers, givers of life, and so much more. Mothers are powerful; if we come together, we can be unstoppable. That’s why, on May 8, I am traveling to Washington, D.C. to stand with other grieving mothers to call for an end to the killing and to say: “Disarm, disarm!”